Customer Reviews

Puccini - Gianni Schicchi / Corbelli, Palmer, Giordano, Matthews, McLaughlin, Jurowski, Glyndebourne Opera

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4 star:		(1)
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This Glyndebourne production of 'Gianni Schicchi' is a success of the highest kind. Sets, costumes, especially the almost choreographed stage action, the marvelous playing of the London Philharmonic under Vladimir Jurowski (a conductor I am growing to admire more and more) and particularly the marvelous singing actors portraying all ten major characters in this Falstaff-inspired ensemble opera are all simply wonderful. The big numbers - Rinuccio's 'Firenze è come un albero fiorito' sung by tenor Massimo Giordano and Lauretta's 'O mio babbino caro' sung by soprano Sally Matthews - are woven into the fabric of the action rather than being staged as numbers per se. And they are sung beautifully. But most important is the fabulous ensemble work that includes such Glyndebourne stalwarts as Felicity Palmer and Marie McLaughlin as Zita and La Ciesca, and the other singers are just as good.

This production was given just a year ago - in July 2004 - and was part of an oddly appropriate double bill. The other opera, Rachmaninov's 'The Miserly Knight' (sometimes called 'The Covetous Knight') was not only composed in roughly the same time period (early 20th century) but has greed as a common theme. I will be reviewing the just-released DVD of that release a shortly. But if it's anything like this production it will be a winner.

This is easily the best overall production of 'Gianni Schicchi' I've ever seen and I recommend it enthusiastically.

TT=74 minutes; includes extras: interviews with stage director Annabel Arden, conductor Jurowski, baritone Alessandro Corbelli (the wonderful Schicchi); a narrated and illustrated synopsis; a gallery of pictures of the cast. Sound: Stereo or DTS surround sound (and the sound is quite good). Subtitles in English, German, French, Spanish and Italian.

Scott Morrison

Gianni Schicchi is the third and final part of Il trittico, Puccini's trilogy of one-act operas. It is a masterpiece of Italian comedy.

The performance on the new DVD is sheer delight from every point of view. It was filmed live at the Glyndebourne Opera House in 2004. The director Annabel Arden adapted the plot from the Middle Ages to somewhere in the 19th centaury. Sets and costumed are beautiful, and Arden is doing an inspired job, full of surprises.

Vladimir Jurowski conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra with excellent results. Puccini brilliant orchestration is heard with great transparency due to the excellence of the recorded sound (True Surround Sound).

The singers are all excellent. The extremely funny Alessandro Corbelli takes the title role; Massimo Giordano and Sally Matthews are the young lovers with fresh voices. Felicity Palmer, Marie McLaughlin and Luigi Roni are some of the relatives.

Opus Arte should get a very high mark for the technical quality and presentation. Picture is crystal clear and the sound is warm and brilliant. Highly recommended!!

I suppose you shoppers for "the next opera to add to my collection" noticed all the five star ratings for this production? I add another five stars. It is one of those operas that gets played again and again. The one you would select to play for your guests who heretofore have avoided opera, always saying the cliche, " I like all kinds of music , except opera and _ _ _ " This mind set is from the fifties, when all there seemed to be were audio vinyl albums ( back when records were indeed albums of 4 records or more ). "Get with it, people; we have a new invention called television, with subtitles"...actually big improvements over old television sets now, both in clarity of picture and magnificent sound.

This is precisely what is drawing unprecedented attention to opera - which can be/shoud be one of the most sensually stimulating experiences one can have outside of the bedroom.

Puccini here deals with one of the most compelling studies in flawed human behaviour in man's history...the business of gut wrenching envy and lust and skulduggerous, years -long- scheming over who gets what in the inheritance. I personally have seen horrible examples of it in my own family more than once! I bet you have too. We can all act like goody two shoes in church on Sunday, til it comes to the inheritance, then we turn sinister !

Whole families no longer speak to each other decades after the reading of the will. For this reason I personally wish everyone was required to see this mirror of human failing, and in so doing stand some chinaman's chance of saving ourselves from ruin. The astounding thing is how it is accomplished with such soaring, triumphant music , tension building recitative, and guffawing, jaw dropping humor. A beyond superlative cast and directing was/is a great help. My hat is off to the director who so subtly choreographed the action for the entire performance without there ever being glimpsed the slightest overacting. Wonderful set, and wonderful singing. I am certain none of you will ever forget, nor will ever stop comparing Sally Mathews'portrayal of the adorable Lauretta - nor will her hauntingly beautiful "O mio bambino caro" ever leave your mind. Wow! Sung with such spine tingling beauty and great passion, without a trace of "overdone'. Magnificent!

The cast is so very superb. I wish I could go on about each one; albeit, I single out Allesandro Corbelli for now, who carried the title role in a way that NO one will ever be able to match it! Allesandro's performance has caused me to seek him out wherever I can find him in other operas. He appears in Rossini's "La Scala di Seta", the Silk Ladder , as a mere blue collar worker in the opulent mason of the romantic triangle sitcom...yet, honestly, without Allesandro, the entire show would have collapsed of its own schmaltziness. He saved that production...yet barely gets the applause at the end.

This little one act Buffo might seem a trifle and not one to take seriously as an addition to your collection; yet I assure you that you will make a serious mistake NOT to have this one. Moreover, I would wager that you would not part with it either! This is a real treasure.

Glyndbourne, whose casting has not always been stellar, nor directing for that matter.... would do well to reassemble this design and direction team/orchestra, set designer,cast, etc. This one rings the bell.

I could not agree more with the previous reviewers. The production, singing, and acting are magnificent and the sound is equal to super-audio!

Puccini's Gianni Schicchi (pronounced Skee-kee) is not only one of the funniest operas ever composed, it is one of the best COMEDIES ever staged, whether of an operatic nature or otherwise! Although it should be noted that the libretto, by Giovacchino Forzano, is based on an episode in Dante's Inferno, it cannot be denied that Puccini supplies a great deal of the hilarity through his astute orchestration. It is a rare thing to find an opera that is not just "humorous" but hilarious, and even rarer is it for a cast to capture the comic timing to such perfection as is done in this brilliant Glyndebourne production. Add to this the fact that the opera contains some of Puccini's most glorious music (and that the engineers recorded the orchestral and vocal brilliance with amazing clarity) and you have a five-star delight! Even people who don't usually like opera should love this one. By the end you will have a pleased grin on your face--just like the Glyndebourne audience does! (Their enthusiasm is wonderful.)

Gianni Schicchi is short, running only a little over an hour. As a one-acter, it is part of a triptych ("Il Trittico") that also includes Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica. This DVD unfortunately only includes Gianni Schicchi even though it was staged at Glyndebourne along with Rachmaninov's The Misrely Knight, which, although much more sober in tone than Puccini's entry, shares with it the theme of how avarice threatens and sometimes trumps family loyalty. Although my understanding is that they were staged and recorded together at Glyndebourne, Opus Arte is selling Gianni Schicchi and The Miserely Knight seperately. I strongly recommend that anybody considering buying this production of Gianni Schicchi also consider buying--or at least viewing--its companion by Rachmaninov. I do criticize Opus Arte for selling them seperately and thus making it more expensive to acquire them than it would've been had they been provided together. After all, they formed a SINGLE night at the opera for those who attended, so in my opinion they should come in a single package. But putting that fault aside, people wondering about this production, perhaps unsure about buying it, should not hesitate. Great comic timing. Highly, highly recommended. Sheer delight from beginning to end.

This is a truly brilliant production of Puccini's comic masterpiece. Although this one-acter, the third in Puccini's "Il Trittico" (trilogy) of one-act operas dealing with the subject of death, is less than an hour long, it packs a more than satisfying punch in the way of great music, well-drawn characters, and entertaining plot.

Annabel Arden has done a marvelous job in drawing out the dark side of humanity in the story, which keeps this production from veering into caricature and slapstick; yet humor is still here in abundance. Vladimir Jurowski leads the London Philharmonic in a brilliant, well-paced reading of Puccini's motif-packed score.

In the title role, Alessandro Corbelli once more shows us why he is considered one of today's most sought-after singing artists. His expressive face, a marvel of muscular mobility, mirrors every fleeting thought and emotion his character is experiencing, and his every gesture is real and telling; yet one never feels that any of this is manipulated or contrived, but is simply a natural outcome of Corbelli's total identification with his character. He uses his considerable abundance of vocal resources intelligently, always in service of the music and dramatic situation, and never for the sake of pure "vocalism". Corbelli is a Schicchi for the ages.

The supporting cast are all top drawer. One could not ask for a better Zita than Felicity Palmer; Sally Matthews and Massimo Giordano (not to be confused with another tenor, Marcello Giordani!) are touching and ardent-voiced as the young lovers.

Included on the disc is an interesting interview with conductor, director, and Corbelli.

This DVD is an excellent introduction for those who are thinking of taking the plunge into the glorious and complex artform that is opera. For those of us already in the deep end, it is an absolute must-have.

"Gianni Schicchi" is an opera perhaps best known for one or two arias taken out of context, but recent productions, like this one here from Glyndebourne or the more recent one at the Met, have made it clear that the opera itself is nothing less than a comic masterpiece. A sort of operatic version of Ben Jonson's gimlet-eyed "Volpone," it presents various forces of greed in conflict with one another in pursuit of a dead man's legacy. Older "blocking" characters, too, have to be outwitted here so young lovers, as classic comedy requires, may finally be united.

It's hard to imagine a better ensemble, conductor, or production than the forces at Glyndebourne have brought together. "Gianni Schicchi" deserves to be more frequently staged, joining its older brother, the long neglected Donizetti work "Don Pasquale," in being more widely recognized as the work of musical and comic genius it is.

When a crook succeeds in being liked you know you have a great opera and great singers who know how to act too. You will enjoy it.

I can't think of a worse concept than moving an opera that turns on a point of Medieval law to the early 20th century. Nevertheless, this production is so well sung and acted that the legal absurdity is completely forgotten. Even on the third viewing, this video is a hilarious hour of entertainment.

Just like the director said on the bonus feature, this well known 'comedy' is also contain with 'dark' feelings. So, if you just laugh through this production and nothing left afterwards, you probably missed some important point from this production, or, they trying to express under the surface. Make sure you watch the interviews on the bonus part to understand what am I talking about.

For the credit, the Orchestra is 'London Philharmonic Orchestra' which is less well-know as London Symphony Orchestra. But, they have done a brilliant work, no less than the bigger names.

You will probably hear 'Stravinsky' at the very end and other 20th century music elements here and there. And I did feel the production is shorter than usually opera. Perhaps, at the merging of 'Cinema' period, Puccini had to adjust the old fashion in past. Puccini's music is probably most 'romantic' compare to his forerunners in Italy, I feel that. 'O mio babbino caro' -- did this bring you tears, the libretto, the passion of love?

Highly recommend for opera beginners (like me).

Bravo!